Apotheosis of a Demon - A Monster Evolution Story

39 – A CONTRACT AND AN OATH

My foggy vision slowly cleared up. I was standing at the World Tree, a giant so enormous it took up all of my field of view.

Good, I came back without any problems. Honestly, staying any longer on Earth would have been really dangerous for me.

*bounce!*

“I’m back, Blobsy.”

She rubbed herself on my feet. She’d been waiting for me on this side.

I scooped her up and put her on my shoulder. Exhausted from overuse of magic, I dragged myself toward the Tree’s roots and spread my arms.

“Here they are.”

The souls of the fifty-six secret alpha testers, children who had met their demise on Earth, flew off from my chest. One after another, they were absorbed into the Tree, as if following an invisible guiding hand.

Go ahead and rest, okay? You’ve earned it.

Through the Saplings, the souls of the other forty-three secret alpha testers who had lost their life in this world were already resting within the World Tree.

Except for me, all the ninety-nine children were together now.

No. 01, No. 08, No. 17… there was no way you could hear me now. Still, I wanted to say thanks. For saving my life.

The [Contract] I made with the World Tree had allowed me to reincarnate into a demon. I had been granted a new life on this world.

It was all thanks to the powers I inherited from my comrades. If I lacked even one, I wouldn’t have been standing here.

The contract had also granted me more power and maturity for my body. I now had the height and appearance of a fourteen-year old.

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Lesser Archdemon Lv. 1]

・The rabbit demon of Laplace. Trickster and guide of man’s fate.

[Magic Points: 730/12000] 6780↑

[Total Combat Power: 1930/13200] 7460↑

[Unique Skill: <Causality Alteration> <Cyber-Manipulation> <Absorption> <Materialization>]

[Racial Skill: <Fear> <Mist Form>]

[Simple Identification] [Human Form (Wonderful)] [Subspace Inventory]

I gave up.

Sure, I might have already accepted the fact that I would be spending my whole life with rabbit ears and tail, but that [Race] was still going way too far, wasn’t it?!

And I might have had thoughts about just embracing the inevitable and getting an actual bunny suit, but that was no permission for [Materialization] to do such a stupidly good job. Now I had a weird outfit. I never even wanted it.

The design, except for the skirt, was probably influenced by the images I’d seen of those sorts of bunny girls.

…at least my chest and hips were covered up. Thank goodness I still had enough subconscious shame to stop the outfit from looking too outrageous.

My skirt was made out of layered sheets of fabric, which made it quite puffy. However, once I took out my cloak from [Packer] and wore it, the skirt magically flattened. How convenient.

Right, so [Packer] evolved too.

It turned into [Subspace Inventory] now, which allowed me to use it in human form, too. Turned out the items I’d been storing until now wasn’t actually staying inside my body like I used to think. They were staying in distorted space.

I was now a [Lesser Archdemon]. Apparently there was a big-shot called an Archdemon, and my class was based on it.

The World Tree must have given me the information. These weren’t knowledge I would have known otherwise.

However, my class didn’t have Low or High-Rank like before, but a level display instead. Did it mean there were multiple more steps before I could become an actual Archdemon?

Most probably, I wouldn’t be changing like in the Rank-Ups I’d done until now. I would only be gaining more power. I had no basis for my belief, but somehow I knew it to be true.

I had over ten thousand magic power now. Still, it wasn’t enough power for me to complete my [Contract] by my lonesome.

This was where my ‘Unique Skills’ came into play.

This was just a guess, but… perhaps my race had changed due to the evolution of my own unique skill, [Reroll].

It had become [Causality Alteration].

I was born with the power to unconsciously cause ‘bad luck’ to happen to other people. They would trip on flat ground. Their scratches would become serious wounds.

My newly-evolved [Causality Alteration] interfered with my target’s karma in order to change an event to ‘the most unlucky outcome’.

But even evolved, my skill was still governed by a chance of success. If the wound in their past was easy to avoid, or if my target was powerful, my chance of success and amount of magic consumed would vary greatly.

Those guards were formerly mercenaries. They were, quite literally, all lucky survivors, so the chance of granting misfortune to their past wounds were over 75% for all of them.

Although the magic consumption really surprised me. To worsen a single wound of a mundane human with no magic and only around 150 combat power, an opponent which might as well be an ant to me, actually took a whole 100 of my magic.

My own stockpile of magic was dropping like a rock just by maintaining myself on magicless Earth. Combined with my attempts to hurt the Deputy Director from a distance, which only had a 12% success chance and which I only succeeded after multiple failures, my remaining magic had dropped to under a thousand.

The minimum combat power I could have was ten percent of my maximum magic power, so I was practically invincible when facing mundane humans. Still, seeing my magic going so low got me a bit worried.

…I mean, I couldn’t help myself. I really wanted to get at least a hit in on those guys.

Unlike before, the mist was no longer the real me. My base form had switched over to being the ‘bunny girl’, while I gained [Mist Form] as a racial skill.

It didn’t really change my combat style. Still, if my body was destroyed, I wouldn’t be able to reform myself into mist again like I used to. I’d need to be more careful.

Especially when I would have to take on the whole world in order to fulfill my contract with the World Tree.

Everyone, from the people of this world to the corporation, all believed in the same thing. That the World Tree and its Saplings sustained the world with infinite mana.

But that was wrong.

Mana on this world was created from the souls of living beings.

As creatures died, their souls were then gathered by the Saplings and then sent to the World Tree.

The World Tree was the maintenance system created by the world of Yggdrasia. Among the gathered souls, souls that had gathered a large amount of experience would be allowed to retain some of it and reincarnate as a higher form of life. Souls not as accomplished would have their experience absorbed by the World Tree, and then reborn as a normal living being.

And finally, souls with only a miniscule amount of experience were completely recycled into pure mana, becoming materials to create new souls.

The mana filling this world all came from converted experience of living beings.

The mana kept inside the World Tree and the Saplings were for creating new life.

But the human race of this world was squandering it for their own luxury. The Tree wasn’t able to keep up with the conversion. It even had to begin dipping into the mana storage set aside for creating life.

With less and less new life being born, this world was slowly heading toward destruction.

And now, even another world came to steal the mana. Mana used on Earth would not return. Yggdrasia was, quite literally, having its lifeblood drained.

The contract I made with the World Tree was one of Destruction and Rebirth.

The human race had built countries around the Saplings, stealing mana like blood-sucking parasites.

My goal was to destroy the ninety-nine Saplings all around the world. And then, with new, strong souls, the World Tree Saplings would be reborn.

Souls possessing power and purity… I would help my comrades, the ninety-nine secret alpha testers, gain their second lives as the World Tree’s new Saplings.

Their souls had known as much. They still decided to go with me.

Once humans lost the Saplings, their civilization would crumble. While individual human thoughts might vary, the countries would surely come to prevent me from completing my quest.

War was inevitable. War between me… and all ninety-nine human countries.

And as Earth was planning to lean on this world to solve their energy problems, they would certainly interfere.

I would destroy this world’s civilization, and I would shut down the meddlings of Earth. I would make enemies out of two planets.

I looked up at the World Tree, at the new home of my comrades. Here, I swore an oath to myself.

I shall become the demon of death. The shatterer of worlds.